It
was their job to bring law and order to the streets of Holland. But that
wasn't the problem for the Dutch police force. The problem was the chaos
inside the police department.

Our case study was part of
a larger project to build a better-performing organization and to help
the internal consultants who where in charge of this. The problem the
police force had was resistance to change from the lower levels in the
hierarchy. Management techniques were not working, and there was a growing
tension between new officers and more experienced managers.

The main problem stemmed from
the use of managerial techniques "straight out of business school,"
which did not work inside the police force. It all began when the government
replaced part of their officers' training by sending the officers to local
business schools instead. The officers themselves were complaining that
the "managerial training" they had learned was hard to apply
in the police force. But why was it hard, and how could they fix it?

jobEQ was called by a consultant
to help to analyse the organizational culture, so that the internal change
agents could be briefed on how the cultural patterns of the organization
we contributing to the problems. In this case, jobEQ's role was limited
to the testing and diagnosis.

500 policemen for all areas
in the country and of all ranks were randomly selected to complete the
VSQ questionnaire. VSQ is the tool jobEQ uses to measure values and cultural
fit. The test has an online format similar to the iWAM, but it measures
factors that are more related to social interaction. These factors include
how focused a person is on certain values, such as success or safety,
and which social patterns they use, such as being left-brained or right-brained.
Feedback reports from the test can be used to train employees to improve
performance and relationships after a merger, a re-organization, a large
recruitment campaign, or other situations where there is social tension
within an organization.

With this sample, jobEQ was
able to provide graphs, statistics, and feedback showing the main cultural
influences in the 26 zones of the Dutch police force. We also looked for
cultural differences between officers and lower ranked employees.

We
found that the root of the problem boils down to the clash between different
value systems. The main value systems within the police organization had
evolved to green and yellow. In this case, we are using a color-coding
system to identify values (popularized by researchers Don Beck and Christopher
Cowan), where green and yellow signify a desire for change, learning,
integration of complex systems, and equality. The old style leadership,
however, was rather blue - valuing tradition, authority, and the greater
good. The new generation of officers was strongly influenced by main value
system taught in the business school, which is orange and correlates with
competition and autonomy.

Wow, three different sets of values. It's no wonder there was friction.

The conclusion was that the management needed coaching to adapt their management style to be more
compatible with the management style which will fit their employees. As
such, this is a similar cases as the one in the incentive ravel organization.
Managers were taught how to ease change onto the traditional "blue"
people, while the younger officers were coached to use their "orange"
values in a way that would not conflict with the proper behaviors of a
Dutch police officer. Overall, this was a case of competing job cultures,
and how you can bring some law and order to the chaos.